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Review: What is Intelligence? by James Flynn

By Michael Hanlon

WHY are we getting smarter? James Flynn, the psychologist who discovered the “Flynn effect”, reveals intelligence to be a predictably complex entity. Nevertheless, he presents a convincing solution to the puzzle of our rising IQ in a book that, while technical in places, is full of gems. Flynn’s convincing explanation concerns not an increase in brain power per se, but a fundamental change in the way we think. Unlike some other postulated solutions (television, diet) it explains, for example, why our great-grandparents were not the imbeciles their raw IQ scores suggest they should have been, and why the Flynn effect may be grinding to a halt. …